thinkbroadband

Savona estate in north Battersea leading Gigabit charge for Wandsworth
Friday 04 September 2015 12:41:34 by
Andrew Ferguson

Another hyperfast bit of news. testing is underway of a hyperfast connection
at Thessaly House in North Battersea, with the service being rolled out to
flats in apartments in the neighbouring Patmore and Carey Gardens estates next
with the eventual ambition to cover some 20,000 premises.

"The speeds we’re seeing are absolutely incredible. This breakthrough
infrastructure project means our council estate residents are on course for
some of the fastest home broadband speeds in the entire country. We’re on the
brink of a tremendous achievement that could set a blueprint for other social
and private landlords to follow.

It will mean our tenants and leaseholders have access to all the benefits of
an incredibly fast and reliable broadband connection which will far exceed the
speeds of existing services. It’s particularly important for anyone with high
data demands like the many local people who work from home or run their own
business."

Cllr Paul Ellis, cabinet member for housing

This is not a total shock the first signs of this happening emerged in
2012 and in 2014 a deal with Community Fibre Ltd was struck with the
community provider rolling out Gigabit and providing access to a walled garden
set of websites for free as part of a digital inclusion strategy. Community
Fibre will be paying £50,000 per year to Wandsworth Council and we presume
funding this from residents who want to buy out of the walled garden approach
at £30 per month for an unlimited Gigabit connection.

We are not sure if this is Fibre to the Building with Gigabit Ethernet
running to each flat (i.e. fibre is run to the utilities cupboard on each floor
which is the Hyperoptic and most common European model) or whether full glass
fibre is going inside each flat. What is a little worrying is the council
release trumpeting speeds of 1086.76 Mbps from the testing as Gigabit Ethernet
will only ever manage 940 Mbps due to the TCP/IP overheads involved, to break
the Gigabit barrier properly requires a PC with a 10 Gbps connection, which is
possible but rare. It is likely that a combination of buffering and sampling
techniques created the over 940 Mbps result.